2006 Training Begins

Today marks the beginning of my training for the 2006 season and beyond. For the next 10 weeks I'm going to follow the program detailed in Ross Enamait's Infinite Intensity. Today's workout? The Magic 50. Well, for me it was "The Magic 30", as I'm new to dumbbell work and I started to feel a bit of back-related nerve shooting so laid off. I'm sure my form sucks, and I overestimated how much weight I could do. Also, 30 was pretty damn tiring. I have clearly gotten soft since the season ended. Amazing how little it takes to slide.

The Infinite Intensity program promises to be fantastic though. It's a mix of workouts like The Magic 50, interval training, a variety of core workouts, dumbbell workouts, plyometric moves, etc. All speed, endurance, and strength, no bulking up. I've modified it a bit, but not much. The biggest change is that Enamait calls for a work:rest ratio of four days on, one day off, but I'm going to go 5:2 (rest on the weekends). I'm also doing some substitutions where I don't have the equipment, like twisting medicine ball throws instead of heavy bag work, for example (although as an Ultimate player I wish—perhaps counterintuitively—that I could keep the heavy bag work - all that rotational power in the hips).

I wrote up a cheatsheet for the program, and I managed to squeeze it onto one double-sided sheet. 8-point Times New Roman, 4 columns, with the minimum margins my printer can handle. This makes it sound like the program is complicated, but it's not. What it is, though, is comprehensive, loaded with variety, and yet still, amazingly, focused. The book is a keeper.